“I was thinking about calling it the Gulf of Trump,” President Donald Trump told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo in a recent interview. “And I decided not to do it.”
Trump moved to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico – a bay with coastline along the U.S., Mexico and Cuba – to the Gulf of America shortly after he began his second term in office last year. By mid-February 2025, Audacy reported that the U.S. Geographic Names Information System officially updated the name, followed by Apple Maps, Google Maps, and Bing Maps.
Per Britannica, prior to the Trump administration’s re-naming of the gulf it was referred to as the Gulf of Mexico since the 1600s. Other names used for the bay have included the “Baye of Mexico” as well as “Gulf of New Spain” and “Florida Sea” the encyclopedia said.
Those names also appear on the USGS listing for the Gulf of America. According to the listing, the Gulf of America “spans over 1,700 miles of U.S. coastline.”
“I was thinking about, it’s going to be called the Gulf of Trump,” the president told Bartiromo. As for the reason, he added, “and then I said, you know, that’s not going to play too well.”
Polls conducted last year generally showed opposition to the gulf’s rebranding as the Gulf of America. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found little support for it, and a Marquette University Law School poll found that 71% of national respondents didn't favor the name change. On a more local level, the Florida Phoenix reported that a University of North Florida poll showed most residents of Florida (a state with much of its coastline in the gulf) didn’t support the change either.
Still, Trump stood by it, even banning Associated Press reporters from the Oval Office for not going along with the change. According to the White House, the gulf’s name was changed “in recognition of this flourishing economic resource and its critical importance to our Nation’s economy and its people.”
This year, the Panama City News Herald conducted a poll that showed most residents in Bay County, Fla., preferred the “Gulf of Mexico” name. There were some people who welcomed the change, including a seafood business owner quoted by the Louisan Illuminator last year.
Trump’s hunch that naming the gulf after himself might have been an unpopular move might be right. Just this week, the president found himself in hot water for a Truth Social posted that apparently positioned him as Jesus Christ and there was backlash last year of the renaming of the Kennedy Center to the Trump-Kennedy Center.
